


And They Were Teammates (Oh My God, They Were Teammates)

by Feeling_Super_Super_Super



Category: The Owl House (Cartoon)
Genre: "and if they pronounce it wrong we kill them", "oh yeah we didn't know which farmers were Good Non-Haitian Spaniards so we made them say perejil", Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Human, Anxiety, Debating AU, F/F, Imperialism, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Makeup, Nonbinary Character, Not saying who, Trans Character, Trans Edric, actually. i've decided. right now while writing these tags, ahem ahem trujillo, amity goes to human!hexside, amity is a blushy mess, and anyone who said "innit" gets shot, and i've been avoiding outing either one for the sake of Mystery, at least one of them is transfem, but actually it's just bc idk which one i want it to be, but idk whether i want the other one to be as well, does this not have a tag? that's homophobic debating is awesome, full disclosure uwu. i haven't actually decided which (if not both) of the blight girls are trans, i had to research loads of "how to do mascara" shit for the makeup scene lol, i think the parsley massacre or at least. its name. is the funniest tragedy ever, idk what else to tag this really its just. amity and luz do debating and makeup, if i can manage to continue this uwu, it gets gayer later, luz is homeschooled, nonbinary luz, possibly she'll be nonbinary but like. idk whether that will be in an amab way, specifically in latin america and the caribbean, that will be a reveal for chapter 4 or 5, that's a lie i have a hc which requires that one of them is, that's canon now, that's like if you hated mancunians so you went around england telling people to say "isn't it", this includes slurs, totally forgot to tag this skddsffsdf
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:08:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25982611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feeling_Super_Super_Super/pseuds/Feeling_Super_Super_Super
Summary: Amity is the unquestioned leader of the Hexside debate team, but when she meets an opponent with an... interesting way of expressing herself, she starts having some questions of her own.
Relationships: Amity Blight/Luz Noceda
Comments: 35
Kudos: 269





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> sorry for not updating Amity's Diary! that's still going, i promise. i'm probably gonna juggle chapters of this and Amity's Diary until s1 finishes, at which point i'm pretty sure i'll end Amity's Diary seeing as that's more canon-directed. who knows, i might finish off my glimmadora fic or even go back to one of the way earlier ones bc why not? it's my ao3 account and i decide which fics i randomly decide to update. (pretend that was the link meme)

Amity Blight nervously went through her notes one last time before getting up on the stage, flipping through the flashcards almost so fast that she couldn’t make out her meticulously bullet-pointed annotations. It was more by force of habit than any desire for a last-minute practice. She’d memorised her entire speech by heart as always, brainstormed possible audience questions and prepared answers, practised in front of the mirror and in front of Willow (they still weren’t… friends, per se, but on her mother’s life Amity would swear there was no better speaking coach than her former bestie and avid greenhouse-goer). She didn’t need any more rehearsal.

Then, frantically pushing the cards back into the pocket of her blazer as she realised her rehearsal time was over, she was jostled onto the platform and got her first proper look at her opponent. The captain of the debate team for the National Home School Association was a girl, about Amity’s age, with brown hair, eyes and skin. She glanced at the name card on her podium, which read _Luz Noceda,_ and decided from her mediocre level of Spanish that she was probably Latina. She was also extremely distracting, bouncing her leg behind the podium and generally looking agitated. It reminded her of her own stimming, but she had learned to keep that under control. Conceal, don’t feel, as her parents had taught using a remarkably relevant line from a Disney movie she had only been allowed to watch once. When the girl saw Amity she gave an excited wave, which caught Amity off-guard. Who did this girl think she was? They were in the regional finals of the most high-intensity debate competition in the country, damn it, not some middle school talent show.

It was Luz Noceda’s turn to speak first, Amity remembered with relief, as it gave her time to readjust herself after the tremendous surprise that was her opponent. She rested her arm on the top of the podium and watched Luz talk, observing her movements as well as the way she spoke – and of course what she said. Luz was an… expressive speaker, it turned out. Amity didn’t think she saw the other girl’s hands stop moving once during her five minute speech, and she seemed to almost turn it into a narrative, changing her inflection dramatically to guide her words along like she was telling a story to the audience. She would have thought more disdainfully of those facts, which she considered rather unprofessional for her liking, if Luz weren’t such a frustratingly good speaker. She hit all the notes required to demonstrate her point, showed that she had clearly done her research, displayed some impressively creative ways of approaching the topic that Amity hadn’t even thought of, and worst of all did it in a way that drew her audience in. Even Amity was starting to agree with her by the end of it.

However, she had also noticed a few key weak points in her speech that were ripe for exploiting, and had put together the necessary arguments to get the upper hand. When Luz finished to a round of applause, Amity adjusted herself so the microphone was in front of her and began. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and before I start may I say congratulations to Señorita Noceda for her extraordinary opening speech.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw Luz’s eyes widen at the word ‘señorita’ and smiled, happy that that spur-of-the-moment decision worked as well as she had hoped. “I’ll be lucky to match your skill, but I think I’m up to the challenge.”

As she got into the speech, picking apart the other girl’s points, refuting them and offering alternatives with seamless grace, she lost herself in the familiar experience. It was part of why she so greatly enjoyed public speaking – the ability to let herself be engrossed in the flow of the debate, not worry about grades or her parents. She went into a trance, almost, forgetting everything except the words themselves. It wasn’t until Luz suddenly perked up and her eyebrows raised, and Amity saw the idle movements of her fingers under the microphone, that she was snapped out of it, and had to fake a cough to hide the hitch in her throat when she saw that Luz was staring right at her, the Latina’s brown eyes boring a hole in her own hazel ones.

She didn’t know what had got her attention, but she couldn’t stop to think about it without breaking her momentum and ruining her chance of winning this debate. She continued on, forcing herself to break her opponent’s gaze and look back out at the audience. When she got to the last seconds of the speech, she allowed herself one last glance at Luz, timing it with a line referring to the other girl’s speech so it wouldn’t look suspicious. Luz had looked down, a blush barely visible on her cheeks, but was evidently trying to pretend she wasn’t still sneaking looks at Amity. Their eyes met for half a second but Amity tore herself away. _You can talk to her after you finish,_ she admonished herself.

At last she wrapped up her speech, doing a quick, measured bow and retiring to her seat at the back of the stage as their seconds each took their places. Luz left her podium as well and came to sit right next to Amity – _there are two seats on the other side for her and her teammate, why is she sitting next to me?_ she momentarily panicked – curling her feet under her and shuffling dangerously close to where Amity was now perched on the side of her own seat. She gently moved up towards Luz and nudged her shoulder, hoping she’d get the message and sit up or at least move away. Instead, she apparently took that as a signal to lay her head down _in her lap_. Amity was barely able to speak, frantically trying to hide her blush, when Luz looked up at her and said, “Sooooo, how did I mess up?”

Amity blinked. “What? Mess up? What are you talking about? You were fine – good, even. Very good, actually. You’re – you were – you’re good, really. I meant what I said in my speech, I’d be lucky to beat you, or whatever it was. You were really, really good, definitely.” FUCK. Thank god the judges weren’t marking her on _that_.

Luz gave a little chuckle, which felt weirdly nice with her cheek resting against Amity’s lap, and said, “Wow, I guess you’re definitely better at speaking on the stage than in person.” _Couldn’t have said it better myself, Luz Noceda._ “Seriously though, what did I do bad on? There must have been something.”

Amity took a deep breath and steadied her racing mind. _Give her practical, useful advice, Amity, not endless compliments or whatever the fuck that disaster was. Debate coaching is something you can deal with._

“Well, there were a couple of small holes in your argument, bits of flimsy evidence and stuff that made it easier for me to find things to refute. But that doesn’t matter really. This is a public competition, which means the judges and the audience are focused way less on what you say than how you say it. Save having the most perfectly constructed, accurate case for when you’re in front of a jury or the Senate. Something like this, and most of the public speaking you’ll do at our level, it’s way more important to be convincing and enjoyable to listen to. Which you definitely are, way more than me. I don’t know how you do it, but you make listening to your arguments feel like listening to someone telling a story. It really drew me in, and more importantly it drew the judges in. And honestly, your actual points were pretty compelling in and of themselves, all things considered. You clearly knew what you were talking about.”

“Really?” Luz said, visibly suppressing a giggle. “Because I’d barely heard of the topic before two days ago. I did most of my studying on the coach journey up here, and that speech was pretty much totally improvised.”

That floored Amity. “You’re kidding, right? You didn’t stutter or slow down once.”

“Yeah, it’s the ADHD. I hyperfocused on the stuff I was reading for it for two hours before we started so I could basically talk about it until I ran out of breath. Oh shit, I think they’re finishing up.”

 _Oh yeah,_ Amity thought, _we have a whole other speech to write._ “Good luck, Luz! Do you want some time to think up what to say?”

“Nah,” said the other girl with a grin. “I’ll just wing it.”

Amity shrugged and mentally went over her template for the second speech, satisfied that she’d have material to fill it in from whatever Luz came up with. Luz appeared to have snapped back to the last minute of Skara’s speech – she wasn’t the smartest or most formal rhetorician, but she got the job done, and there weren’t exactly students lining up to join the Hexside debate team in any case – and was focusing intently on what the girl was saying. Finally Skara finished up and stepped down from the podium, curtseying to the audience, and returned to sit beside Amity.

“Well done on the speech,” Amity said brightly to her partner.

“Thanks,” Skara replied, “even though you didn’t listen to a word of it.” At her dismayed look, she added, “I heard you and the other captain whispering all the way through. It’s fine though, here’s my notes.”

Amity shot her a grateful smile and stood up, making her way over to where Luz was already at her podium, ready to start. When she saw Amity arrive, Luz made a last-minute adjustment to the position of the microphone, cleared her throat and began her team’s final speech.

Considering she was improvising a response to a speech she hadn’t heard most of, she was surprisingly good at keeping momentum, not noticeably messing up and always making _some_ amount of sense, at least. It didn’t quite have the sharpness of her first speech, but she still made good points which appeared to be tied back to her team’s overall argument. And she still had that storytelling air about her. Amity thought it would be okay to lessen her focus on Luz’s speaking skills, and once again notice her general demeanour. She was still incredibly expressive with her hands – at one point, she stopped mid-sentence to demonstrate what she meant with barely comprehensible gestures – but it never detracted from that storytelling quality, and made it more engaging for Amity as an audience member. She would never be able to do that, Amity thought. It would look awkward and forced and distract from her message, rather than add to it as Luz’s did. 

All of a sudden she heard applause from the audience and, realising that Luz had finished her speech while she had been staring at Luz’s hands, her face grew red. Then it immediately became redder as it hit her that she had to speak now, and every coherent thought had flown out of her head apart from _Holy shit Luz’s hands are big._

Stepping up to the podium, suddenly very aware of her heart beating in her chest, Amity looked out at the crowd. They were all staring at her, waiting for her to start speaking. To start speaking, and make a speech, to reply to Luz’s speech to which she hadn’t been paying attention because she was thinking about things she really shouldn’t have been thinking about right now. And now she had no idea what to say. And wow, the lights were bright.

She coughed to stall time, as she looked down at the microphone, and her tightly-balled fist in which she was clutching a scrap of paper – Skara’s notes! She silently sent a prayer of thanks to whichever deity had decided Skara should be selected for this trip.

She laid the paper flat in front of the microphone and glanced down, skimming through her notes. She remembered that Skara kept her notes meticulously, tended to refer back to them frequently and made extra annotations and addenda while she was speaking, and, sure enough, there were little check marks clearly denoting which points she had and hadn’t covered. _Oh_ _Skara,_ Amity thought, _I could kiss you right now!_

She looked up again, and Luz was mouthing something which looked encouraging at her. The audience, on the other hand, was less encouraging and more expectant. Amity willed herself to focus, slip back into her trance and start her speech.

It went well at first, managing to draw from some earlier points she’d heard before Luz’s hands distracted her as well as Skara’s notes, and she was able to get back into some semblance of a rhythm. That mostly got her through her own speech, albeit with more hesitation than she’d ever had to do in her life. But she held on, kept going and didn’t break down. At least, until the audience questions.

As soon as she concluded her speech and made to step down from the podium, Luz shot her a quizzical look, and Amity suddenly remembered the audience questions existed. Skara had nothing on them, because she knew that was Amity’s job, and Amity had forgotten everything she had brainstormed, which meant she was going to have to improvise. And for all her skill, all her self-assuredness, she had one fatal flaw: Amity was _terrible_ at improvising.

The first question went to Luz, and Amity discovered immediately that Luz was decidedly not terrible at improvising. She handled the questions with grace and confidence, not slowing down at all as she delivered her answer – even though she could tell it was something she was making up on the spot. Meanwhile, Amity was stuttering and punctuating her answers with “um” and “uh” and “well I think it’s obvious” and anything else she could think of to give her time to think. And the audience could tell.

The questions were increasingly directed at Luz, who could give more interesting, entertaining and thought-provoking answers, until Amity was only getting one out of every four or five by the end of the seven-minute slot for questions. At one point, one of the questions for Amity flummoxed her so much that she spent twenty seconds opening and closing her mouth until she could do nothing but quietly say, “I don’t know.”

By this point, she was on the verge of tears, and Luz evidently noticed. Looking at the teacher who was moderating, she asked, “How much time have we got left?”

The moderator looked down at his watch and, with a startled look, said, “Only enough for one more question.”

“I’ll take it then,” she said, and pointed at a woman at the back of the auditorium. It was an easy one, which Luz could answer by referring to her own speech, and before Amity knew what was happening Luz had thanked the audience for their participation and led Amity out of the auditorium and into a bathroom.

Amity followed dumbly as Luz positioned her in front of a mirror and reached into her bag. “What are you doing?” she eventually asked when Luz brought out a makeup case and set it in front of her.

“You were barely not crying for most of that and it’s ruining your makeup, so I’m fixing it,” Luz replied, her tongue sticking out in a cute concentrating face. She took out a brush and a bottle whose label Amity couldn’t see, and started brushing down from just below her eye to her cheek. Looking into the mirror, she watched as the redness below her eyes started to lighten and return to her normal, pale, skin tone. Was it that obvious that she was so upset?

“We’ve got to get back, they’re probably ready to say who qualified the nationals,” Amity said, aware of how long they’d been missing.

“Pfft,” Luz replied, not breaking concentration from her face. “What are they gonna do, announce it without us? You’re not going anywhere until people won’t think you’re about to burst into tears.” She finished up, smudging it with her thumb until it had blended in, and put the items back, taking a couple of different bottles out to replace them.

“If I were you, I’d be happy to see me being a mess. I was fucking awful in there, I could barely make it through. If I started crying in there, it would just make the judges more likely to pick you,” Amity said, cut off by Luz’s hands coming _very_ close to her eye.

“Try not to move now,” Luz said as she began brushing something dark and liquid-y along the bottom of her eye. “This will be painful if it gets in your eyes. And you seem really cool, why would I want you to be humiliated in front of like fifty people?”

“To win.”

“I don’t care about that. I just do this because it’s fun, and it lets me express my creativity in a way that my mother doesn’t disapprove of. It doesn’t matter to me how far I get – and by the way, if that’s what qualifies as ‘fucking awful’, then I don’t know what ‘good’ looks like. You were still really good in the second round, even if you couldn’t answer one question.” She switched to the other bottle and moved to her eyelashes, shuttling back and forth and flicking the black liquid upwards. Amity clenched her jaw, scared that some of the substance would fall into her very vulnerable eyes.

“Trust me,” Amity said darkly, “my parents won’t see it that way, and neither will my teacher.”

“Then I’ll just tell them they’re wrong. All done!” she added, stepping away from Amity. “It’s like you never nearly cried.”

Amity turned towards the mirror and her eyes widened as she saw Luz’s handiwork. “Holy shit, I look amazing,” she whispered to herself.

“You say that like you didn’t before,” Luz quipped beside her.

“Well, I certainly didn’t have all this black shit around my eyes.”

“Hey, I like all that black shit,” Luz said, completing the quote. “So are you saying you didn’t put on mascara or eyeliner this morning?”

Amity shook her head, carefully trying not to disturb god knows what substance was currently very close to her eyes. “I’ve never done makeup in my life.”

“Well you have to start!” Luz said. “The winged eyeliner really works on you.”

“I have no idea how, though,” Amity protested.

“Then I’ll teach you!”

Amity looked sceptically at her. “When? We just met each other and I don’t have your number. Besides, we _really_ have to get back inside now. We must have been gone for twenty minutes by now, at least.”

With newfound confidence, she led Luz back into the auditorium. They made to join Skara on the chairs behind the podiums, but Amity was intercepted by her father, Miss Clawthorne and her mother trailing not far behind.

“Where have you been, young lady?” Mr Blight said, his voice firm and clearly angry. “You make a mockery of yourself, and therefore us, and then disappear with your opponent? That is unacceptable; you should have been here, explaining why it was that all the hours and money we invested in your education with Miss Clawthorne has been wasted on that disaster of a closing speech.”

Amity bowed her head, not wanting to look her father in the eye. “I’m sorry, Father. I messed up, I know, and I promise I’ll do better from now on. I’ll make it up to you, I swear.”

Then she heard Luz’s voice behind her, and felt the other girl move past her to stand in front of her father, looking up at his much taller frame and pointing an accusing finger directly at him. “You didn’t mess up, Amity, you did amazingly up there. And Mr Blight, the reason why it was that she had to disappear with her opponent was that she was on the verge of a panic attack because you made her feel like she had to be perfect up there. Luckily one of us cares about your daughter enough to not let her win this competition looking like she’s just been crying.”

Amity looked on in astonishment as this random girl she just met not only insulted her father, but managed to render him speechless. And did she really just say she cared about Amity? 

Luz spun on her heel and turned back around to Amity. She walked over to where the other team members were sitting, awaiting the announcement from the judges, and Amity happily followed, sparing a glance towards her father. He had also walked away, heading back towards the judges, who were standing on a stage on the other side of the auditorium, along with a woman who looked somewhat like an older version of Luz – her mother, maybe? As soon as her parents and tutor arrived, the head judge received him with a nod and stepped forward towards the microphone.

“Well, now that our respective team leaders have arrived,” she began, and Amity chuckled as Luz stuck her tongue out in response to the passive aggressiveness, “I believe it is time to announce the results of the Regional Debate Finals. As always, there will be an award both for the winning team, who will go on to compete in the next round of the competition – in this case, the National Quarterfinals – and for one individual speaker, who will receive a prize right here regardless of whether they go on to compete in further rounds. We will start with the prize for the best individual speaker, which goes to Miss Luz Noceda.”

Luz’s eyes, which had been starting to close as she drifted off, shot open in surprise, and Amity saw that she’d have to nudge her up to collect the prize. She did so, with a harder shove than intended, but it apparently was enough to wake Luz up, and she approached to collect the prize. It turned out to be a certificate and a fifty dollar gift card for a clothes store, and Amity’s heart soared watching Luz’s face light up when she collected it from the judge. The woman she thought looked like Luz gave her hug as she went past, and if Amity’s lip-reading skills were anything to go by, she got a “well done, Luz” from her as well, cementing Amity’s judgment that she was probably Mrs Noceda.

Luz sat down in a parallel row of seats to Amity’s, clutching her certificate to her chest, and the judge went back to announcing.

“After a heated debate amongst us judges and the teams’ representative teachers, we have come to a conclusion that is unprecedented in this competition. We would like to invite the leader of the Hexside debate team, Amity Blight, join Luz Noceda on the stage to collect the prize for the joint victory of the Regional Finals by both Hexside School of Performance and Academics and the Midwest chapter of the National Home School Association.”

It was Amity’s turn for her eyes to shoot open in surprise, and she went up to greet the judge, avoiding the still icy gaze of her father. Luz approached as well from the other side, and, standing side by side, the two of them accepted a large trophy from the judge, then turned and bowed to the audience.

With one announcement left to make, the judge turned back to the microphone after giving the girls their trophy. “The first round of the National Quarterfinals will take place in two weeks’ time, and debate topics will be released next weekend to those participating,” she finished.

“So how is this going to work?” Amity asked the judge when they had all retired to the seats at the back. “Are we going to have a tiebreaker somewhere down the line?”

“We’re not exactly sure yet, but it looks like you and Miss Noceda are going to be combining into one team to represent both Hexside and the home-schooled kids in the National competition. The judges are extremely reluctant to add an extra team into their carefully arranged system for the competition, it seems. In fact, they were reluctant to admit Hexside at all, given Luz’s definitive superiority in your final speeches, but between your parents, Mrs Noceda and myself, we were able to – ahem – convince them,” said Miss Clawthorne.

Amity turned to Luz’s mother, who was standing proudly next to her beaming daughter – and Amity could really see the resemblance now – and asked, “You stuck up for me?”

Mrs Noceda nodded warmly and said, “Yes, dear. You were incredibly good up there, even under as much pressure as I know you are” – the latter came with a pointed glare at Mr and Mrs Blight – “and I can sympathise with how you must have felt towards the end there. I’m glad my daughter was there to take care of you while we were discussing things in here.”

Amity was stunned, especially at that very thinly disguised slight at her parents, and before her blush could get too obvious she nodded her head respectfully and said, “Thank you very kindly, ma’am.”

Luz laughed and bumped elbows with Amity. “If we’re gonna be a team in the next round, that means we’ll need to get together sometime next week to plan our speeches together,” she said. And then, leaning close to Amity’s ear so only she could hear it, added, “And maybe I’ll give you that lesson I promised.”

Amity chuckled, her blush coming readily back, and said, “I’d like that.”

This elicited a warm smile from Luz as her mother tried to get her attention so they could leave. Amity waved goodbye as Luz was dragged off and said, “See you soon, Luz Noceda.”

With an answering wave and a wink, Luz replied, “See you soon, _Señorita_ Blight.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luz has been invited to Amity's to study, and they have some... conversations about things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so this was supposed to be a chapter where Amity and Luz study together in their room, but it turns out i have the self control of gollum, and it got to the same length as the last chapter and we hadn't even gone upstairs yet, so. i decided we're doing that next chapter and this is just a 4k excuse for me to love ed and em, make luz have adhd and turn amity into the biggest autistic mood i've ever beheld <3

Amity Blight looked up for almost the first time in the hours since she’d been staring uselessly at the blank Word document in front of her at the sound of a knock on her bedroom door. It was her siblings, she observed with a mild pang of disappointment, likely come to annoy her or send their parents’ regards.

“Whatcha doing, Mittens?” asked Edric, the youngest by eight minutes (the eight best of his sister’s life, according to her), leaning on the doorway in what Amity was sure Edric thought was the coolest-looking pose anyone had ever thought of.

“Thinking of a way to get you two ‘accidentally’ adopted by some other poor family,” Amity snapped tersely, hoping to make it clear she didn’t want to deal with them.

“Aw,” his twin sister Emira cooed, “but then you’d be weft aww awone with mean old Mommy and Daddy, wouldn’t you, wittle babygiwl? And we don’t want that, do we?”

“It’s not like you’ve ever done much to protect me against them before – why start now on my account?” Amity countered. Edric and Emira moved further into the room and she sighed, her privacy officially gone.

Gathering up her laptop and standing up from her bed, she said, “Don’t make yourselves comfortable, I’m not staying. Or do, I don’t care. Tell Mom and Dad I’m not coming back this evening.” She tried to push past her siblings, but Emira put her arm out to block her.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” she asked, eyebrow raised.

“Um, I don’t think so?” Amity said uncertainly.

“It’s Sunday,” Edric picked up from his twin, “and I seem to remember some discussion I overheard between your tutor and the leader of that home-school group you were debating against, about how today would be the best day for them to come over and prepare your joint speeches.”

Fuck. She totally forgot about that. And she was with Miss Clawthorne when Mrs Noceda phoned her to arrange this, so she didn’t have the excuse of not knowing. Ugh, this would throw off her schedule for the whole day.

“Cheer up, Mittens,” said Emira, who’d clearly seen her face fall – was that because Emira was good at reading her, or was she showing her emotions again? She’d have to remember to ask that – or no, because that would be weirder. She’d just assume the worst and start doing her nightly facial expression practice again. “At least you get to spend an entire afternoon with that cute Spanish girl.”

Amity nearly choked on her own breath and, immediately seeing both of her siblings burst into laughter, knew from experience that a bright red blush had spread across her whole face. Dearly conscious of how squeaky her voice was, she angrily turned away and said, “She’s not even Spanish,” quiet enough that they couldn’t hear.

Regrettably, she should have spoken quieter. “What was that?”

She was cornered and the twins had scented blood; she knew there was no way of getting out of this unhumiliated. “She’s not Spanish,” she reluctantly repeated, “she’s Dominican. I, um, looked up her family after the competition, and they’re a Dominican-American immigrant family. Her grandmother came to New York just after President Trujillo’s dictatorship ended, or just before, maybe, the documents I found only narrowed it down to within a year of 1961 so it could be either and you… don’t care, do you?” She hugged her laptop to her chest and silently hummed, waiting to see how Ed and Em would react.

Emira shifted from one foot to the other and looked down at an angle of about forty five degrees, while Edric held her gaze for a couple of moments. “So,” Edric said at last. “How did they get all the way out to Chicago?”

Amity blinked. That wasn’t the reaction she was expecting. A positive change, certainly, but still, it wouldn’t be wise to let her guard down right away. “Uh, they moved twelve years ago, after Luz’s dad left them judging by the airline tickets. A job opportunity, probably. And a chance for a fresh start.”

Emira lifted her gaze fifteen degrees, but only to switch from the floor to her fingernails as her preferred method of avoiding Amity's eyes. “You know it’s weird that you know that about her. She’s gonna think you’re weird if you tell her you know that,” she said, moving one of her fingers over the nails of the others in what looked like a practised motion. Was that how she passed the time while Mom and Dad were telling her off?

“Yeah, thanks,” Amity muttered in response. “Am I free to leave?”

“Nope,” replied Edric cheerfully. “You have the right to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

Rolling her eyes, Emira swatted her brother on the arm and said, “Shut up Ed, fuck 12.”

“True dat,” he humbly agreed.

Emira continued, “Yes, Amity, you can leave, but I don’t know why you’d bother.”

“Have fun on your date!” Edric called behind him as he and Emira left the room. Amity quickly sucked in air and felt her face become very red very quickly.

* * *

True to Ed and Em’s warning, a car pulled up in their garage twenty three minutes later, and Luz and her mother got out, the latter nervously handing the keys to their young valet. Moving away from her bedroom window, Amity rushed downstairs to intercept them before her parents got to the front door, but found that Ed and Em had beaten her to it.

“Welcome to our humble abode,” said Edric, gesturing idiotically in the direction of the stairs.

“You are awaited in the Chamber of Amity, right this – oh, I see that her Highness has come to greet you personally,” Emira continued, with an equally stupid grin on her face.

Amity gave a shy wave to Luz, then caught herself and threw a stern look in the twins’ direction. “Hey, Luz. Mrs Noceda. I assume you’re here for the, uh, debate thing?” _Gee, well done Amity. “Debate thing”? Real fucking smooth_.

Luz appeared not to notice, and waved excitedly back, saying, “Hi Amity!” at an almost uncomfortable volume. As soon as Amity reached the bottom of the steps, Luz charged into her and wrapped her in a bear hug. It nearly threw her off-balance – in fact, it nearly threw her off her feet and back up the stairs – but she managed to catch herself on a railing to stop that problem, and then tentatively return the gesture before Luz pulled away. Strangely, as she did so, Amity noticed herself missing the contact. Usually when her parents or one of her assorted aunts forced her into a hug, she couldn’t stand it and was profoundly relieved when she was let go.

Mrs Noceda nodded at her kindly. “Lilith – er, I suppose she’d be Miss Clawthorne to you – said you’re a very organised young woman and you’ve been working hard on this since you got it, so I suppose I’ll be okay to leave you two ladies to it? Luz, I’ll be back to collect you around seven o’clock.”

Immediately Luz sidled up to her mother and put on her best puppy eyes. Looking up at her and pouting, she asked, “Actually, I was hoping if I could pretty please maybe possibly stay over with Amity tonight for a sleepover? I hid a pair of pyjamas under my seat in the car.”

“Stay over with me for a _what_?” asked Amity immediately.

“A sleepover,” Luz said. “Where I stay here for the night, we stay up chatting until midnight and eat cookies or whatever.”

“Yeah, I know what they are,” Amity retorted quickly, and a little more aggressively than she had intended. “I just… have never had one before,” she followed up more softly.

“Oh my god, then you have to let me have one Mom! It’s her first time, it would just be cruel if you deprived her any longer!” Luz pleaded, starting to sound like Ed and Em.

Speaking of which… “Please, we’d love to have her for the night! We’ll take good care of her, we promise. It’s just such a shame, Amity’s not real popular in school so it’s rare she gets to hang out with her friends like this. It would do her some real good, I’m sure,” was said between the two of them. Only one of them was speaking at any given moment, but they switched between themselves so quickly and seamlessly that it was hard to tell which it was for any individual handful of words. Reading their tone, Amity couldn’t decide whether they were being genuine, or masking their intentions to humiliate her or drive Luz away or… something.

“Well, I suppose it couldn’t hurt,” Mrs Noceda finally relented. “As long as you’ve got your phone and it has plenty of charge so I can contact you. And as long as your parents are okay with it,” she added, looking for the duration of that last sentence at Amity.

She wanted to reply that yes they’d definitely be okay with it in fact they wouldn’t even notice, but Emira once again got there before her. “Yes, they’re usually pretty relaxed when I bring a girl or Ed brings a boy home. As long as they don’t wreck the house, start a fire or disturb my parents the next morning there’s rarely an issue.”

“I promise I won’t do any of those three things,” Luz said quickly.

Mrs Noceda nodded her head firmly and added, “And if she does, she’ll have her own mother to be afraid of as well as yours.”

“I’m sure Luz will be a lovely guest, and I’d be delighted to have her,” Amity quickly said, suddenly wanting to be up in her bedroom without non-Luzes around. “I’ll take good care of her and you’ll have her back bright and early tomorrow morning, I promise!”

Mrs Noceda, looking slightly confused but obviously (hopefully) understanding what Amity wanted, bid her farewell and closed the door behind her. As soon as she had left and they heard her car rattling down the driveway, Emira discreetly nudged Amity and whispered, “She passed the test.”

 _The test?_ she thought, then after a moment, _oh, that._ “It’s only the first round,” she reminded her sister, not bothering to lower for voice for Luz’s sake. She had no power over Amity or her siblings, and Amity could simply cut her off except on a professional level – she wouldn’t enjoy it, certainly, but no lasting harm would come from another Willow. “Half the time they just didn’t hear it; we’ve got a long way to go before I’m willing to put any sort of trust in her.”

“Oh, you mean mentioning bringing home a girl in front of my mom?” asked Luz, just as nonchalant as Amity had been trying to appear. Amity’s brow raised appreciatively. She hadn’t expected Luz to notice Emira dropping that in. “You could have just asked me,” she continued, “I could tell you she’s okay with that stuff – well, for the most part, anyway.”

After a brief yet excruciatingly awkward silence, Edric valiantly took one for the team and was the one to ask, “Do you… talk about that often?”

“I mean, I’m out to her,” Luz said with a laugh that Amity suspected was fake. Then Amity realised what she had just said, and nearly choked.

“Like, as gay, you mean?” she spluttered. She saw Edric slipping a banknote into Emira’s hand while shaking his head and saying, “Second time today. Truly tragic,” while Emira tried to hide her shaking laughter.

“Well, bisexual, but yeah,” Luz answered. “Are you… gay as well? I assumed your brother and sister are from the “mentioning bringing a girl/boy home” test, but is it all three of you or are you just, you know, a good ally?”

For some reason Amity hadn’t anticipated the question, and it caught her by surprise. “Uh, yeah I’m, um, gay as well, I’m, I’m a lesbian, I like – I like girls, and I’m, you know, gay. And stuff,” she said, because once again Luz was an ice cream truck and the little kids inside Amity’s brain who made words go immediately took off running at the sight of her.

“So, you said your mom was okay with it?” Edric said quickly.

Luz turned back to him and slipped into her cute Excited Talkative Mode, nodding a lot and bouncing on her the balls of her feet. “Yeah, I mean she’s got no problem with it, she was all ‘Love who you love, Mija, I will always support you’ which is nice. And I’m not gonna get kicked out or anything drastic like that, at least. She would never cut me off for anything, not even if I killed a man or robbed a bank or something – nothing short of voting Republican, she told me, haha. But she just… doesn’t fully understand, you know? She doesn’t get what it’s like to feel _different_ all the time, or why it’s so important to me when the main character in the show I’m watching says she has a crush on a girl, or why I spend so much time writing fanfic to let myself get lost in fictional worlds where I can get the girl of my dreams. Which would be whatever, I mean I can’t fault her for not empathising with an entire worldview she’s never experienced, but she doesn’t try to _understand._ I mean, we’ve talked about my sexuality a total of three times, and I’ve been out to her since I was eleven. One of those was when I told her I was bi, another was when I told her I was writing a love scene between these two girls in a show we watched together, and she just awkwardly laughed. The third was when a boy shoved me into a locker, stole my wallet and called me a dyke, and I got detention because I _dared_ to hit him back.”

“Oh god, I’m so sorry,” Amity said almost reflexively.

“Whatever,” Luz said, and Amity dismissed the voice in the back of her mind saying Luz was angry at her. “I got my wallet back. Sorry, I’m ranting to a bunch of strangers, I’ll stop now.”

“No, it’s okay,” Amity reassured her, only blushing a little bit. “I don’t mind.” She looked up and realised abruptly that they were now seated in the living room that their parents refused to enter. Amity was on the couch, Edric and Emira lying down to her right, and Luz was extremely close to her, so close that her right leg was touching Amity’s left. Suddenly she was blushing somewhat more than a little bit.

Another silence settled over the four of them now, but this time it felt warmer, and not as uncomfortable. Then, without any sort of preamble, Edric said, “What does your mom think about trans people?” Amity shot a nervous look at Emira, who had immediately sat up straight, and then a much more pointed glare at Edric.

“Why, are you – are you trans?” Luz said, her eyes widening as she spoke. _This is not going to end well,_ Amity thought at once, and coughed, still staring at Edric.

He cleared his throat and began to babble something, but before he could say anything stupid Luz interrupted him and said in an apologetic voice, “Oh shit, sorry, was that insensitive?”

“No,” Amity cut in, “it’s just… a personal question. Which I’d… rather we not talk about now.” Another quick glance at Emira showed that she was no longer as tense, and Amity allowed herself to relax as well. _Please, Luz, don’t push this. Answer the question or don’t, but don’t ask again._

To her utter relief, Luz simply let out the breath which was puffing out her cheeks and said, “She’s… okay, I guess. There was, um, a whole thing last year where my nonbinary cousin wanted her to respect their pronouns, but that’s sorta… quite difficult in Spanish, because it’s really gendered, much more so than English – the language, I mean, not the culture. So anyway, she made a fuss because “it’s too hard to remember” and “I’m not calling you ‘Latine’, you’re either Latino or Latina, it’s an insult to our culture.” And I had to awkwardly avoid giving my opinion on the topic even though everyone else was taking sides – pretty much anyone under twenty was with my cousin and anyone over twenty was with my mom – because I didn’t want to have to explainthatidbeenthinkingaboutcallingmyselfthataswellbutididntwanttoifiknewshewasgoingtodisapprove but anyway, in terms of more visible, like, binary trans people, I don’t know really, she’s never really spoken about that. I’d assume she’d be the same way she is about being gay, just about trans experiences and things instead.”

“I thought it was Latinx,” said Edric when she had finished speaking. “Instead of Latine. I’ve never heard of that before.”

“It’s the Spanish gender neutral ending,” Luz said, her face moving into that same tongue-sticking-out face Amity had scene when Luz did her makeup at the competition. “Most words end in “o” or “a”, either masculine or feminine, so nonbinary people like to use “e” instead to avoid gendering words. It gets confusing when you have object pronouns and things, so there’s a lot of backlash over it.”

“What about Latinx?” Edric repeated, and Luz immediately made an exaggerated “disgusted” face.

“That is the most horrible set of sounds I’ve ever heard. Is that an “x” at the end? How would you even pronounce that in Spanish? It would have to be like…” Amity couldn’t really understand what she was saying after that. It sounded like “lateen-hh” and definitely not a real word in English or Spanish.

Emira poked her brother good-naturedly in the side and said, “Stop bothering the poor girl for a sec. Luz, what was that you said really fast so we couldn’t hear it?”

That brought Luz out of the reverie of trying to pronounce fake words very fast, and she drew her knees up close to her chest. “Um, it was nothing don’t worry about it,” she said, speaking very fast.

Amity put one hand on her knee and said, “It’s okay, you don’t need to tell us if you’re not comfortable. But, um, if it helps, we have some experience dealing with trans people between us. We’re not gonna say which, though, so please don’t ask us that.”

Luz nodded and lowered her legs. “That’s cool, I won’t push if you’re not ready. Especially as you aren’t pushing me. But, it’s cool. I wanna tell you guys. For a while now, I’ve been wanting to use gender neutral language for myself, and not call myself a girl.”

“So you’re nonbinary?”

“Yeah, I think so. My mom hasn’t let me visit my cousin or text him or anything in the last few months, so I’ve had nobody to talk to about it, figure out my feelings or whatever.”

“What about at school?” Amity suggested brightly.

Luz sort of blankly stared at Amity, and Amity blankly stared back, until Luz finally said, “I’m home-schooled.” And Amity immediately dropped over dead of embarrassment, rest in peace, the funeral is on Monday.

She didn’t, but she did immediately swivel round and faceplant herself into the nearest pillow, which happened to be in Emira’s lap. Emira gently stroked her hair while she leaned over to Luz and said, “You can talk to us about it if you want. We can welcome you to the Hexside School LGBT club.”

Amity didn’t see, but she guessed (correctly) that Luz’s face had lit up when she said, “Really?” like a child getting a puppy for Christmas. “How many members are there?”

Then the child saw the puppy get shot when Edric answered, “So far, the three of us. Meetings are in Mittens’s bedroom and the schedule is whenever Mom and Dad are out.” Amity could practically _feel_ the elatedness drain out of the other girl.

“Hey,” chided Emira, her hand tucking a hair behind Amity’s ear, “there’s Viney too.”

“Babe, she snuck in once through the window.”

“Whatever, she still counts.”

“Hey,” Amity finally decided to speak again, muffled by the pillow, “remember when Luz was here to write a debate speech with me?”

Luz replied, “It’s fine, we have all night, remember? My mom won’t pick me up until like eight tomorrow morning, so we can stay up late and still get nine hours of sleep.”

“Wait,” Edric said, laughing. “What kinda math is that – what kinda time is late for you?”

“I dunno, like ten, eleven? Maybe up to midnight as a special treat for a sleepover, but any later and I would literally fall asleep on top of my phone screen.”

“Wow,” he chuckled, “that’s so early. That’s, like, before I start getting ready for bed. That’s practically before I even go to my room for the night.”

“The morning of our debate last week,” Amity offered, still muffled, “I went to sleep at 5 am, then got up at 7 am for school as usual. I was running on two hours’ sleep that entire debate, and was literally out like a light on the way back. So I can stay up considerably longer than ten or eleven if I need to.”

“Damn,” said Luz thoughtfully. “That’s really sad, I’m so sorry. Do your parents not teach you basic mental health boundaries for yourself? My mom would kill herself if she found out I was treating my body that badly. Tonight you’re gonna get a good night’s rest, okay?”

“Um, sure?” Amity said.

“Which means we should probably go up now and get started so we can have a nice evening later on!”

“Ughhhhh,” Amity groaned into the pillow. “Two more minutes.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luz and Amity finally get to actually writing those speeches, and Amity learns things about herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UGHHH all my notes for this chapter deleted bc my wifi has been shitty today :( sorry y'all they're gonna be shorter than they would have been most probably.  
> anyway. hi y'all! i'm back. sorry for the long ass hiatus, i was busy doing things like settling back into school and doing homework and procrastinating this fic uwu. idk how long it will be between chapters now that i'm back learning full time, but hopefully there shouldn't be another 3 week gap. then again, who knows lol, my schedule and motivation are unpredictable and for all anyone knows my school could go back into lockdown tomorrow. 
> 
> wrt amity's diary, i'm aware it's been even longer since i posted than it has been for this one. part of that (other than the above settling into school and procrastination reasons) is that the flashback-y scenes are written to be canon-compliant, and the later ones are now pretty much confirmed to have to be canon-divergent now that s1 has ended, and i'm not rlly sure what to do with that. i also don't know whether i want to reorder chapters to be more readable and chronological. i'll work it out though, and within the next few weeks you should see a return to those (hopefully). i promise i'm not intending to abandon it permanently, whatever i end up doing with it.

“Okay,” said Luz cheerfully when she had dragged Amity out of Edric and Emira’s grasps, “what’s the debate topic?”

Amity blearily stared at her partner – lying down in Emira’s lap seemed to have jump-started the sleep function in her brain and the rest of her body was reacting accordingly – and mumbled, “Didn’t you already know? I checked that as soon as it arrived, and I’ve been doing prep work for about two days.”

Luz shrugged her shoulders while she pottered about Amity’s room, presumably looking for that prep work. Amity finally pointed her towards the bed and her open laptop. With a distracted, “Ah, thanks,” she hopped on, Amity following behind, and looked at the document Amity was writing in.

“Oh cool, this looks really detailed! This will be a great start,” Luz told Amity as she skimmed through the document. Amity watched over her shoulder as she scrolled down to the bottom – remarkably fast; _Luz must be one hell of a quick reader,_ Amity absently thought – and then back up to the top, where Amity had written the debate topic: “This house believes that the USA does not have a moral obligation to intervene in foreign dictatorships.”

When Luz read that, her brow immediately raised. “You can tell that was written by a bunch of gringos,” she said. After she saw Amity’s puzzled face, she clarified, “I guarantee if I Google any Latin American country which had a dictatorship and a US intervention, the intervention will have happened first. They fucked up so many of those countries, most of the dictatorships only happened because the USA ruined the country in the first place. So saying that they have a moral obligation to invade them afterwards us is a ridiculous concept.”

Amity had shuffled up towards Luz on the bed while she was speaking, and by the time she was done, Amity was at her shoulder. “That’s a really fascinating perspective,” she said, shocking Luz into falling backwards with a squeal of surprise and nearly hitting the laptop on the way. “Oh, shit, sorry!” she said frantically, reaching down to help her up. “Sorry, I didn’t realise how close I was.”

“Nah, don’t worry,” Luz said, taking Amity’s hand and pulling herself up. “What were you saying?”

“Oh, um, just that I think that’s a really interesting point you were making. None of the articles I’ve been reading mentioned that perspective, really – although, maybe that’s because they’re all written by white Americans. I think we could develop that into a really interesting speech.”

Luz looked surprised. “Wait, really? I was just venting about white people, to be honest. Do you actually think that’s good?”

“Yeah, absolutely. You’re from the Dominican Republic, right? They were occupied by the USA at some point, weren’t they?”

“Yeah, in the 20s I think,” Luz confirmed. “And our dictator came in the 30s. So, my point stands.”

 _That works out perfectly,_ Amity thought. “Okay, we can totally use that as our major example. If we do some research, I bet we can make a compelling case that the US occupation caused Trujillo to come into power and be dictatorial, and then you can probably spin that into a polemic against US intervention, following on from what you were saying earlier.” While she was speaking, she lay down and squeezed next to Luz on the bed, her laptop in front of them both. (And she definitely focused on said laptop, and not on the fact that Luz’s face was now _extremely_ close to her own.)

Luz seemed to be getting into this idea as well, and she felt Luz bounce her leg against Amity’s, triggering an involuntary and completely new vocal stim of her own, almost like a cat purring. As soon as Amity realised what she was doing, she put a hand over her mouth and prayed that Luz hadn’t noticed.

No such luck, though. She immediately started giggling, which was barely suppressed when she put a hand over her own mouth, and looked apologetically over at Amity. “Was that… was that a stim?” she asked – Amity could tell she was using that awkward I-don’t-know-how-you’ll-react-to-this tone, with which Amity was very familiar. When she saw what must be an embarrassingly nervous look on Amity’s face, her tone softened and she said, “It’s alright if it was, Amity – I was just stimming then as well, so I don’t mind if you were too. In fact, I’d be really happy.”

After a minute or so of deliberating, she finally settled on, “Yes, I think it was,” in as formal a tone as she could manage. It probably came out less formal and more… Amity didn’t know. Squeaky, maybe? She hoped she wasn’t squeaky. She also hoped Luz wouldn’t consider it rude – maybe she was being too standoffish or aloof or something and Luz would think Amity didn’t want to open up to her or maybe she’d think Amity was embarrassed of _her_ stims and shit, Luz was talking again.

Once she had finished snapping out of her spiral, she tuned back into what Luz was saying and caught, “… I think you might be autistic.” Oh. Oh, shit. Luz was looking direction into her eyes – _perks of laying right next to her,_ Amity supposed – and she sensed recognition.

“Ar-are you sure?” she stuttered. She had kind of flirted with the thought of exploring that possibility a while ago, but from her parents’… less than savoury approach to the topic on the odd occasion it was mentioned, she had gathered that it wasn’t a good thing to be, and mostly dropped the idea shortly afterwards.

Luz was nodding, though. Quite vigorously, actually. “Yeah, I mean I don’t know for certain but I ended up researching it quite a lot when I was discovering stuff about my ADHD and I think it really fits you.”

Amity looked away, a blush creeping slightly onto her face. “My parents would kill me if I were autistic,” she muttered.

Then, without warning, Luz pushed the laptop completely out of the way then bounded out of the bed, climbed over Amity and snuggled up to her other side. She lifted Amity’s chin up so that Amity was looking directly at her once more, then said, “Amity, I haven’t known you for that long, and I’ve only met either of your parents once, but that’s long enough to be able to _promise_ that what your parents think is useless. In fact it’s more than useless. It’s so useless that it’s actually use _ful_ , because whenever they disapprove of something that’s a sign that you should do it. So, you should definitely hear me out on this, because they wouldn’t want you to. Have you ever had a moment where someone says something small, like a tiny bit of criticism, and then that eats at you the whole day? And you build it up so it feel a million times worse in your head and you start thinking everyone hates you because of whatever it is they were critiquing?”

That felt incredibly familiar. “Does it… have to be an actual critique? Or can it be, like, something I was worried they would think, even if they didn’t actually think that?” Amity cautiously asked.

“Oh my god,” Luz said immediately, “I get that all the time. So yeah absolutely that can happen.” Amity could see her face twitching and almost instinctively realised she was holding back an anecdote, and Amity had to resist the urge to giggle.

“Oh, well in that case, I think I had a moment like that just now.”

“Wait, really? Was it something I said?”

“Not really. But when I said I think it was a stim, I was worried I was being too formal and you’d consider it rude or whatever, and when you didn’t react immediately I started spiralling that you’d hate me because of it.”

Luz finally moved her hand, which had been resting by Amity’s chin, and stroked Amity’s hair. “I’m so sorry, I know how that feels. I promise though, I’d never hate you. Especially not over something as silly as tone of voice. Besides, I struggle with that all the time.” Luz had a way of being weirdly comforting, and at once Amity was more relaxed with her. She figured that just knowing someone else was going through something similar was calming – the same way she felt when she and Emira had had that first conversation about being trans, she supposed.

“Okay, next question,” Luz continued, moving her hand away gingerly, as though she hadn’t realised where it was. “Do you ever get something that you spend a week straight thinking about literally nothing else? They’re called hyperfixations, and especially long-lasting ones are called special interests. The last ones especially, they’re the kind of things that I could literally talk about for two hours straight without taking a breath.”

Hmm. She had to think about that one a bit longer, before it suddenly hit her. _Of course,_ she thought. _How could I forget about that? Twelve-year-old me would be furious._

“Well, there was this one series back when I was maybe twelve or thirteen, called Azura? There’s like five books and a couple of movies, and I literally inhaled the entire series in about a month. While juggling full-time school, extra tutors, a half-dozen extracurricular activities and a couple of sports. Even now, I bet I could theorise about the series for a long while before I got bored. Probably longer than most things hold my attention for, nowadays.”

Luz was nodding furiously now. “Yeah, that’s exactly right, you’re definite– wait did you just say Azura?” she suddenly interrupted herself.

“Um, yes?” 

“Holy shit, I didn’t realise you were into that series! It’s literally my main special interest as well, I’ve written so much fanfiction for it over the years.”

That was… an interesting thing to know. Both their strangely coincidental mutual special interest, and the fact that Luz wrote in her free time. “You write fanfiction?” she queried, because she was curious.

“Uh, yeah, occasionally,” Luz said, not quite meeting her gaze.

Amity, who had by now become good at reading Luz’s (very visible) moods, recognised her nervousness quickly, and instantly reassured her with a hand on the other girl’s shoulder, “Hey, it’s alright. I’d love to read some sometime. Hecazura all the way, am I right?”

Luz looked at her with a surprising expression of contempt and suddenly her worry came back. “Hecazura?” Luz asked incredulously. “I think perhaps you meant to say Azurate.” Well, that once again wasn’t what Amity was expecting. The contemptuous look had gone, replaced by something Amity was utterly unable to read, and it took a few minutes for her even to understand what Luz had said.

Seeing Amity’s look of confusion, Luz rushed to clarify, “Sorry, that was unclear – it’s a little inside joke in the fandom, whether you call it Hecazura or Azurate. I think Azurate sounds cooler, and I’ve gotten into loads of arguments online over it. I just… I assumed you knew what I meant, sorry.”

“No, it’s okay,” Amity assured her. “It’s just, my parents don’t really let us use the internet unsupervised. I’ve only ever read fanfiction a few times, when Emira got her friends to smuggle in a phone to use for the afternoon. But I don’t think I’d particularly want to be part of – uh, fandom, you called it? – in a social way like that. I’d rather just enjoy things in private.”

Luz’s face fell. “But wouldn’t you want to discuss your theories and headcanons and favourite ships with someone? That’s part of the fun of a fandom, sharing it with friends who care about it as much as you do, writing and drawing the characters and sharing them and getting feedback on it.”

Shrugging, Amity replied, “Sure, but I’ve done fine without that for most of my life. And besides, it’s not like my parents are suddenly going to let up and let me use the internet however I’d like.” Luz still looked upset, so she added, “I’d be happy to share that kind of stuff with you, though.”

This cheered Luz up, and she was smiling up at Amity now. “So, Hecazura. You ship them?”

“Oh yeah, absolutely. I think they’re perfect for each other, and they could totally plausibly get together in Volume Six, if they ever actually release that.”

“Oh definitely! I mean it’s probably not gonna be canon, considering it’s Disney, but the pieces are totally in place for it. You know,” Luz added mysteriously, “when Hecate apologised to Luz at the end of Volume Five, after they saved Malingale together, I thought —”

“—That they were going to kiss?” Amity interrupted.

“Yup!” Luz clearly didn’t mind, carried along by the momentum of their shared fangirling.

“Honestly, I’m kinda tempted to write something of my own, a scenario sort of like ours – they have to team up for a competition, debating or sport or something, after originally being competitors against each other.”

Luz looked at Amity with a sly grin on her face and whispered, “What are you implying, Blight?”

When she realised what Luz intended to suggest, she blushed and turned her head away to hide it. “I’m not implying anything, I just thought it would be a cool theory,” she murmured, trying to convince herself as much as Luz.

Undeterred, Luz pressed on and said, “Well sure, but you’re a Hecazura shipper which means you’re duty-bound to make it an enemies-to-lovers fic. And if you’re basing this on us, then what does that imply about us?”

 _She’s really gonna make me say it,_ Amity thought, more with amusement than annoyance. “That… we should go from enemies to lovers as well,” Amity reluctantly spelled out.

With a mock gasp, Luz said, “Wow, Amity – lovers, that’s so forward of you!”

Pushing her friend lightly on the shoulder, Amity theatrically rolled her eyes and replied, “Hey, you’re the one who suggested it! Are you trying to hint that you like me or something?”

“Maybe it’s just a headcanon,” said Luz with an equally theatrical wink, which soon turned into giggles, and before Amity knew it she and Luz were both lying next to each other, laughing their heads off for god knew how long.

Finally, Luz sat up, leaning back on one hand, and after glancing back at the laptop she said, “Um, I hate to cut this short, but I just realised we’ve been getting distracted for kinda a while. I absolutely would love to continue talking to you about Azura – and heck, help you learn about being autistic – but we would be up talking all night if you let me spend any longer on either of those topics, and we really do have to write those speeches sometime tonight.”

Amity followed Luz’s gaze and saw that it had indeed been nearly an hour since they had gotten sidetracked. “Oh yeah,” she chuckled, “the speeches. Alright, let’s plan them. Obviously you should be the first and last speaker and I’ll go in the middle.”

“What?” Luz said suddenly, obviously not having expected to hear that. “You’re a way better speaker than me, and more experienced. You should take the lead here, trust me.”

“No, definitely not,” Amity said firmly. Sitting up next to Luz, she placed her hands on Luz’s shoulder and, wanting to justify her decision to the other girl, continued, “For what I think we should go for, we need the body of the speech to be passionate and emotion-driven rather than fact-based or just analytical. Remember, the angle we’re working is ‘it’s immoral for the USA to intervene in foreign dictatorships because most often, they’re the ones who caused those problems in the first place’ and we’ll be trying to prove that America is responsible for instability in places like the Dominican Republic. We need to be telling a story, not just laying out facts, and your style is much better for that. I’ll be more useful providing backup, taking what you say and demonstrating that it proves our point. Besides, you’re the one from the country out of the two of us. You’ll have a much better ability to make it personal, really connect with the audience.”

Almost immediately after she had finished, Luz mused, “Do you always think all this through so carefully?”

“W-well, yeah, I do,” Amity stuttered. Then, more quietly, she added, “Do you not?”

“Nope!” Luz cheerfully replied. “I just go with the flow. If I win, great! and if I don’t win, then that’s okay too. It’s probably – this isn’t an accusation against you or anything, in fact I’d imagine it’s probably your parents’ fault for pushing you way too hard – it’s probably a lot more healthy than throwing everything into it and gambling your entire happiness on being successful.” _Okay, ouch_ , Amity thought, and crossed her arms. Seeing that she’d struck a chord, Luz backtracked and repeated, “Seriously, you don’t need to take that as an insult, I promise. It’s just, I feel bad watching you push yourself too hard at this. You were… you seriously took it hard at the competition when you thought you’d done badly, and I know how that feels. To never feel like you’re doing enough.”

Amity let her arms fall back away from her chest, and Luz took the opportunity to take hold of her hands, squeezing them softly. “Thank you, Luz, that… that really helps,” Amity said softly, relishing the comfort of the other girl’s touch.

“ _No hay problema, linda_ ,” Luz said with a faint smile. Then, seeing Amity’s confused face, she swiftly added, “It’s Spanish, it just means ‘no problem’.”

“Oh, okay,” Amity said. “What about the last word you said, ‘ _linda’_?”

Luz froze, and Amity could see a moment of panic on her face. “Uh, it’s just a Spanish phrase – a slang word, really. And it’s kinda hard to translate. Can we maybe just drop it, please? Forget I said the word.”

“U-Um, sure, okay,” Amity stuttered. Torn between not understanding what Luz had said and why she was so insistent on changing the subject versus wanting to respect Luz’s boundaries, she hesitated. Finally, when Luz retracted her hands from Amity’s and laid them protectively on her own lap, she decided to say, “Hey, Luz, you don’t ever need to if you don’t want to, but I don’t want you to be afraid to say what you’re thinking. I don’t know what it was about that that spooked you, and I won’t push any further unless you make it clear you want to tell me, but I promise if you do, I won’t judge you for it or think less of you, or make fun of you or anything like that.”

Shakily, Luz nodded her head and said, “Thanks, Amity, but I’m not gonna do that. At least, not yet. Look it up yourself after I’m gone tomorrow, if you want.” _Well that’s something_ , Amity thought, still worried about the unease still evident on Luz’s face.

A brief moment passed in which neither of them spoke, the tension from moments earlier filling the air. Then Amity coughed slightly and said a little too brightly, “So! Back to the speeches…”

As soon as they got back into the nitty-gritty of debating, Amity showing Luz the sources she had found and Luz providing passionate commentary and familial anecdotes, Amity felt herself relaxing. She noticed the same with Luz – the other girl was more comfortable stimming with Amity now, after only a few hours together, and she was getting just as excitedly focused on the subject as Amity was. It was fun _,_ Amity thought, being able to get really into a topic like this with someone else. She had never really had this experience before – Ed and Em were usually doing their own thing together and people like Skara were only really in it for the grade. It was the passion that Luz had, the way she obviously cared so much about the work she created, that enticed Amity. It was that same passion that had Amity up at obscene hours of the morning reading newspaper articles from the Civil War and teaching herself differential calculus, and she had never seen it – let alone been able to synergise with it like she could here, with Luz – in any other person before.

With half her mind focused on the various articles she was pulling up for Luz and the rapidly blossoming set of speeches they were generating together, and the other half on her newfound appreciation for human connection and the peculiar way that being this close to and working so extensively with Luz was making her feel, time metaphorically flew by. Before long the daylight outside her half-closed curtains had metamorphosed into twilight, and by the time Luz and Amity sat triumphantly in front of a more-or-less completed script for their speeches, “sat” had rather considerably shifted towards “lay huddled together under blankets”. Eventually even the word “triumphant” ought to be removed from the statement, with that feeling quickly being superseded on Luz’s part by exhaustion, as it was evidently past her usual bedtime and she made this known by leaning drowsily against Amity’s shoulder; and on Amity’s part by the fact that she was Extremely Very Aware of What Luz Was Doing.

After some time had passed in this position – during which Amity periodically felt Luz softly snoring, then occasionally jerking awake and trying to be discreet about it – the girls’ attentions were drawn by a sharp knock at the door.

“Evening, girls,” Edric said from the doorway with a bright smile. “How are we getting on?”

“Eurgh, you sound like a shitty high school teacher who’s trying to be hip with the kids and failing miserably,” scoffed Emira as she came up behind him, pushing him the room.

Amity snuck a glance at Luz and decided to risk pointing out Edric’s mistake. “Um, also, not girls. Luz is nonbinary, remember?”

“Oh yeah, haha,” Luz chuckled. “Forgot about that.”

Amity stared at her. “How do you… just forget about telling someone something as deeply personal as your gender identity?” she asked.

“Oh it’s not hard,” Luz replied. “One time my mom sent me to the store for just bread and milk. So I made a voice recording of myself saying “pan y leche”, put it on loop and listened to that for the entire time I was in the supermarket, and then when I got home I realised I’d picked up neither of them.”

Laughing, Edric nodded and said, “That’s impressive. One time, around when I’d just started passing as a guy, I forgot I still needed to cover my chest when I went swimming, and ended up flashing my tits at two gay dudes in the men’s changing room.”

Luz mirrored Edric’s laugh with a grin and, without mentioning the information Amity was dearly aware he had just revealed, asked, “How did you know they were gay?”

“Well,” Edric answered, putting his hand to his chin and pretending to look like a wise man, “when one man gives another man a blowjob in a changing room wearing nothing but a towel and a pair of flip-flops, it’s usually a safe assumption. It looked like quite a nice blowjob, as it happens. Very sensuous.”

“Seriously,” Emira thankfully cut in before Edric said anything more, “ewww. Nobody wants to know.”

Suddenly Amity noticed something, and turned to Luz, ignoring her siblings’ antics. “Hey Luz, you haven’t told us what pronouns you’d like us to use for you. Do you have a preference?”

Luz tilted her head to the side and thought for a moment. “She/her doesn’t really seem to be a problem for me, you’re welcome to continue using that. I would kind of like to try out using they/them for a bit though. So, either of those for now.”

“Okay,” Amity said, nodding thoughtfully. “Good to know. I’ll try and remember to use they/them for you when I can.”

“Thanks! And, um, just so I don’t feel awkward being the only one, what should I use for y’all’s pronouns?”

“She/her for me and Emira, he/him for Edric. And only those,” Amity said, putting a little bit of emphasis on the last few words.

“Cool,” Luz said. “Your pronouns all match your gender expression, that won’t be hard to remember. Oh, and also, about calling me a girl, I think I’m more strongly against that than the pronouns, so just call me a nonbinary person from now on, please.”

With a smug look Emira mused, “It’s funny how life works sometimes – six hours ago I called you a cute Spanish girl, and now it turns out the only one of those you are is cute.”

“Hey,” Amity said, good-naturedly throwing the nearest object – a paperback notebook she used as a sketchbook – at her sister, “stop flirting with my girlfrie—” _Fuck_. “I mean friend. Shit, I meant friend, I swear,” she stammered, panicking. “I don’t think of you that way – I mean, unless… unless you want to – but you don’t obviously, so just forget it. Please, just pretend I said friend…” she trailed off pathetically. She turned away from Luz but continued sneaking nervous glances at her friend to gauge her reaction.

Luz wasn’t saying anything, and appeared to be trying to hide her reaction from Amity, which in itself was a bad sign. Luz bit at her nails, then dropped her hand to her neck and began fiddling with the collar of her shirt.

The twins, for their part, were mostly silent, the first glimmer of laughter from Edric having been quashed by a deft elbow from his sister. She offered Amity a wan smile, and Amity’s panic subsided slightly. At least one of those two clowns had some sense of propriety when things got serious.

 _If only Luz would react like that,_ Amity thought grimly. Another surreptitious look at Luz showed much the same thing: Luz was nibbling at a thread from her sleeve now, and she appeared to be trying to avoid Amity’s glance just as much as Amity was to Luz’s.

After another pregnant silence, Amity finally went to say something, just as Luz opened her mouth. “Um, about that—” they both said at the same time, then a pantomime of, “Oh okay, you go first,” “No, you should go first,” “No it’s okay, you should speak.”

Eventually they settled on Amity speaking first, and she quietly said, “So, uh, I didn’t mean to say girlfriend there. It’s just that, well… I’ve kind of been wanting to —”

“It’s okay,” Luz interrupted, “I understand. This is my fault, I was kind of flirting with you earlier and being way too forward, and I probably confused you. So… sorry about that.”

Amity frowned and replied, “What do you mean, “I confused you”? Luz, I’m autistic, that doesn’t mean I’m completely clueless about relationships or social cues or anything. Are you implying you’re not interested in dating me – you were just flirting for the fun of it, or something?”

Amity could see that Luz was getting as flustered as she had been moments earlier, and some shameful part of her was whispering that she deserved it. She tried her best to ignore that thought, and focused on what Luz was saying. “That’s not what I meant at all, I promise,” Luz was trying to reassure Amity. “I just meant, I was way more forward than I should have been, and I just didn’t wanna, like, push you into something before you’re ready.”

 _That… wasn’t much better_ , Amity thought. “Look, Luz,” she said softly, placing a hand on Luz’s knee and making sure Luz was looking her in the eye. “I like you, okay? I think you’re incredibly cute, and interesting, and clever and funny and pretty. I accidentally called you my girlfriend because I’ve been thinking most of the afternoon about how much I wish you were. I’m going to ask you out now, and I’m not doing that because you’ve confused or pressured or pushed me into anything. I’m not doing anything I’m not ready for, I promise. I don’t know whether you’re ready for something like this, and if you aren’t you should say so and I’ll take the rejection as gracefully as I can, but please don’t be worried about whether I am. Okay?”

Luz, across whose face a blush had been spreading while Amity spoke, nodded quickly and murmured, “Mhm.”

“Good,” said Amity with a satisfied smile. “So, Luz Noceda, would you like to go on a date with me sometime?”

Luz blushed even more – surprisingly, Amity thought, as she had literally just said she was going to. _Or maybe she already forgot,_ that mischievous voice chimed back in, eliciting a guilty laugh from herself. “Yes, I’d love to,” Luz replied, managing to keep her voice smoother than she appeared to be feeling.

Suddenly all the smoothness that _Amity_ had been feeling all crashed down, and she realised with shock what she had just managed to do. “Okay!” she squeaked excitedly, realising that she’d somehow secured a date with a cute girl and not embarrassed herself and revelling in the utter excitement. “Um, I’m free next Saturday after the debate, we could go for ice cream or something?”

“Sure, it will be nice to celebrate our victory,” Luz replied. “I guess that removes the need for one of us to pick the other one up at seven or whatever other cliché.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Amity said softly, beginning to do that vocal stim she had discovered earlier.

Somewhere behind them, Amity was vaguely aware that Edric and Emira were still in the room. She heard Emira say, “Huh, I didn’t know you could do that,” then reply to Edric’s “Do what?” with, “Get her so annoyed that she forgets to be all shy and embarrassed.” She rolled her eyes as Edric cracked up at that and Emira belatedly joined in with somewhat more dignified chuckles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun fact for y'all: i really didn't like writing amity's style of narration this chapter. overall i was pretty happy with it wrt characterisation - i put a lot of emphasis on her noticing people's body language, facial expression etc in a style that resonated with the way i was writing her as autistic, and i think i did a good job of it. but it had the downside of making it a lot more difficult compared to the earlier chapters to write well-flowing, well-paced scenes without being impeded or slowed down by the way amity and therefore the narration processes information. idk how well it turned out to an outside observer, and i'd appreciate hearing from y'all how that worked out in your opinions. but jsyk, all that stuff about the angle of emira's gaze or the movement of luz on the bed etc, that's all intentional based on how i and i think a lot of autistic people consciously register people's mannerisms so we can assimilate better in social situations.
> 
> also, idk why you would know this so on the assumption you don't: i'm a white british girl and a monolingual native english speaker, who is learning spanish in school and currently trying to integrate it into my daily life (especially online, eg on discord). in line with this, i’m intending to make an effort to accurately and respectfully write luz’s experience as a latine, with latino culture and speaking spanish. however, ik i’m not necessarily gonna get that perfect all the time and i won’t have all the nuance down for a culture i’m not part of. so i’d love your continuing feedback on that – tell me what i do right, especially if you’re latino yourself, and how i can improve, so i know i’m giving y’all the best i can offer you uwu.

**Author's Note:**

> i’ll retitle the chapter tomorrow i just forgot to make it multi-part and i‘ve got to go to sleep now so it’ll be more creative i promise  
> nvm fuck it the simple chapter titles are staying


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